Analysing the impact of short-term rentals
Growth in the number of properties available for short-term rent in European cities is having an impact on local residents. We spoke to Dr Antonio Paolo Russo and Dr Riccardo Valente about the SMARTDEST project’s work in analysing the social impact of short-term rentals, which could then inform the integration of tourism into urban policy.
A certain number of houses and apartments in European cities have always been available as short-term tourist rentals, but the advent of digital platforms like Airbnb has represented a tidal wave of expansion for this accommodation modality. The impacts on local communities are highly controversial. “Cities are becoming increasingly attractive for temporary populations, which is producing a structural crisis in the infrastructure and services that are supposed to meet the needs of resident, stable populations,” outlines Dr Antonio Paolo Russo, Professor of Urban Geography at Rovira Virgili University, and Principal Investigator in SMARTDEST. This increase in the supply of short-term rentals could be leading to the exclusion of some local people from the housing market. “Part of the housing stock is basically no longer available for longer-term rental. Indirectly, this affects the price of rentals, and also property purchase prices,” explains Dr Russo. “This leads to the displacement of sectors of the resident population outside the neighbourhoods where houses are unaffordable.”
SMARTDEST project
This effect has been observed in several cities, particularly those that attract a lot of tourists, such as Venice, Barcelona, Lisbon or Amsterdam, among those treated in this project, but it is a general trend across urban areas across the continent (Valente et al., 2022). “The idea is to study population and commercial change in these areas. There are other effects beyond the housing market,
related to the occupation of public space, public transport and the general conviviality or atmosphere of these areas. These trends are affecting the ability of local populations to move, work and live in these cities,” he says. Researchers are probing deeper into these trends in the project; part of this work involves analysing data on AirBnB rentals in Barcelona and correlating it with other indicators. “We run a set of regression modelling to explore the relationship between the presence of short-term rentals and what we use to call residential or housing stability in Barcelona, which points to the proportion of residents that have been living in a location for at least five years,” outlines Dr Riccardo Valente, a researcher working on the project. Results have shown a clear relationship between the number of short-term rentals on the one hand and residential stability on the other, which is mediated by a number of indicators
related to housing costs such as mean income and income variability (see Figure 1).
Remarkably, workers in the tourist sector, the most precarious across the urban economy, are those who are at higher risk of having to move out the city where they work, as pointed out through another piece of statistical analysis (Valente et al., 2023). This work uses Barcelona as a case study but its insights can easily be extrapolated to many other urban areas subject to comparable trends of tourist pressure and labour regimes, especially in the south of Europe. In a nutshell, the tourist economy of European cities has been growing before the pandemic and is likely to grow further with the current recovery, but it so does at the expenses of the very workforce that supports this success. Alongside analysing social exclusion issues, the project’s agenda also includes bringing different parties together in City
SMARTDEST
Cities as mobility hubs: tackling social exclusion through ‘smart’ citizen engagement
Project Objectives
SMARTDEST is an EU-funded H2020 research project, bringing together 11 universities and 1 innovation centre from seven European and Mediterranean countries. It aims to develop innovative solutions in the face of the conflicts and externalities that are produced by tourismrelated mobilities in cities, by informing the design of alternative policy options for more socially inclusive places in the age of mobilities.
Project Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement ID: 870753.
Project Partners https://smartdest.eu/partners/
Contact Details
Antonio Paolo Russo
University Rovira i Virgili
Labs to share ideas and develop potential solutions. “In our Barcelona CityLab we talked with stakeholders and experts, including representatives from the real estate industry, housing associations and charities that are dealing with social exclusion. We designed together a model for analysing the risk of residential displacement,” says Dr Russo. The SMARDTEST CityLabs also provided a
policy and urban planning. The social impact of tourism is a prominent issue not just in Barcelona, but also several other cities, and Dr Russo hopes the project’s findings will hold wider relevance. “We hope that the case of Barcelona, and the solutions that were presented in this case, could then be applied to other contexts,” he says. This is not necessarily about trying to reduce the
Coordinator of the H2020 - SMARTDEST project
Department of Geography / Faculty of Tourism and Geography
C./ J. Martorell 15, 43480 Vila-seca, Spain
T: +0034 977 558384
E: antonio.russo@urv.cat
W: https://smartdest.eu
VALENTE, R., RUSSO, A. P., VERMEULEN, S., & MILONE, F. L. (2022). Tourism pressure as a driver of social inequalities: a BSEM estimation of housing instability in European urban areas. European Urban and Regional Studies 29(3), 332–349. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096
97764221078729?journalCode=eura
VALENTE, R., ZARAGOZÍ ZARAGOZÍ, B., & RUSSO, A. P. (2023). Labour precarity in the visitor economy and decisions to move out, Tourism Geographies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14 616688.2023.2172603
Antonio Paolo Russo
good opportunity to test the impact of policy interventions designed to reduce the risk of social exclusion. “We simulated how a given policy intervention – for instance rent controls – might affect our dependent variable, which is residential stability,” explains Dr Valente. “We were able to gather more evidence from this co-creative, participatory process.” This research holds important implications for local authorities responsible for housing
number of tourists, but rather protecting the rights of local residents to enjoy their own cities. “We are looking at how cities can cope with being a tourist destination,” continues Dr Russo. “There need to be mechanisms in place, and policies that protect what we broadly call the right to the city – the right to stay there, to stay in the place where you want, to live close to your job, and to enjoy a good quality of life.”
Riccardo Valente
Antonio Paolo Russo is Professor of Urban Geography at the Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona. His recent research centres on urban transformations and global mobilities. Riccardo Valente is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Professor of Urban Geography at the Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona. His research focuses on the analysis of processes of social disorganization, and their implications for public health and residential choices. His recent research centres on urban transformations and global mobilities.
Cities are becoming increasingly attractive for temporary populations, which is producing a structural crisis in the infrastructure and services that are supposed to meet the needs of resident, stable populations.Figure 2: Co-analysis session at the Barcelona CityLab. Authors’ own source. Figure 1: Conceptual model of residential displacement under the pressure of short-term rentals, used in SMARTDEST estimations. Authors’ own source.